


Of Whom We Do Not Speak

by Rens_Knight



Series: A Healing Force [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rens_Knight/pseuds/Rens_Knight
Summary: A Jedi and an Imperial walk into a pub...First-year medical resident, Dr. Ben Solo, isn't the only odd man out at Nema Memorial Medcenter on Coruscant--for opposite reasons, so is his supervisor, Dr. Rylkir Zarander.  But in order for Zarander to truly take off his mask, Ben must put on one of his own and step into forbidden territory.
Series: A Healing Force [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843372
Kudos: 3





	1. Part 1

_Damn whoever let that Imp butcher in here!_ Still _feel sick every time.  
_

The leaked thought wasn't even aimed at him. But as they entered the hospital cafeteria, Dr. Ben Solo felt his ears burning anyway, on behalf of his supervisor, Rylkir Zarander. There'd been plenty of hints before that the Zabrak doctor, Sebroo, had a low opinion of his colleague, but actually _hearing_ confirmation felt like a punch in the gut to the young Force telepath.

It wasn't like Ben didn't get similar kinds of thoughts and emotions aimed at _him_ \--the whole galaxy was having to relearn the entire concept of what being Force-sensitive and a Jedi meant, and reactions to that ranged from awe to ignorance to skepticism, all the way to outright contempt or fear. Not to mention the fact that the administration of the Nema Memorial Medcenter on Coruscant had granted him a waiver as a Jedi, to openly carry a lightsaber at his side, a dispensation that for reasons Dr. Solo himself completely understood given his civilian vocation, a sizeable portion of the hospital's staff felt he should not have received.

But for some reason, hearing it aimed at Zarander, who had no chance of really, _truly_ knowing for sure what was being hurled his way, stung even _worse_. And as long as Dr. Sebroo didn't actually say it out loud, Ben couldn't even do anything to defend Dr. Zarander without making the situation a whole lot worse. All he'd do there would be to shift Sebroo's attention from the 'Imp butcher' to the 'Jedi mind-reading freak _.'_ At least Dr. Zarander had _some_ tenure to his name. Ben was just a first-year resident. And one whose disgrace was very likely to get leaked to the tabloids if he got fired.

There wasn't anything bloodthirsty about Dr. Zarander, Ben thought to himself as they went through the line, picked up their food, and waved their hands above the handprint scanner to pay. Surely he would've sensed it by now. In fact, for Zarander to work with a Jedi the way he had--considering what the Empire had always said about the old Order--and not only that, to work with the son of two Rebellion generals who'd played key roles in bringing said Empire down...it was really something. _  
_

_As long as you're here for the same thing I am_ , Zarander had grunted, the first day of Dr. Solo's residency, though there'd been more than a little trace of skepticism behind the words. Hell, Dr. Zarander hadn't even believed in the Force at first--at least, not until after a couple months, Ben had offered to demonstrate his telekinesis, even working up to gently lifting the older doctor's hand a few centimeters from the table with his mind.

But now...what to _do_ , Ben thought, as he sat down across from Dr. Zarander. 

He certainly couldn't fix the attitudes of people like Dr. Sebroo, who couldn't sense the type of person Zarander really was, not without violating something a whole lot more serious than doctor-patient confidentiality. But he could feel the toll even the overt attitudes were taking on Zarander. It was like the man was walking around the hospital with a sign on his back that said, _I'm an Imperial. Kick me._ And there was that hounded sense, that restless sense that emanated from him that felt an awful lot like a tooka cat about to bolt from predators. That worried Ben. 

They made small talk for a bit. As far as Ben had been able to tell, without getting too intrusive, he hadn't been able to pick up any signs since starting his residency, that Zarander had a family on Coruscant...or really _anywhere_ on the best-traveled hyperspace lanes. And friends--well...it was hard to truly be _friends_ with anyone when you had to hide almost all of who you were or where you'd been, in order to find some modicum of acceptance in what considered itself polite society.

Ben certainly knew plenty about what the Empire had done to people. He _knew_ why people like Dr. Sebroo hated everything and everyone associated with it. Nonhumans especially had tons of reasons, considering they'd been treated as second-class citizens at best--slaves or _beasts_ at worst. Uncle Chewie of all people knew about _that_. He'd had no compunctions about teaching a brutal lesson to anyone who tried to treat him that way...hell, he'd barely even tolerated it that time Dad and Uncle Luke had asked him to _pretend_ to be their prisoner in order to get Mom out of that Death Star prison block. But he hadn't continued on living a life dominated by hatred over times--however awful--gone by.

But something nagged at the back of Dr. Solo's mind. When it came to Zarander, did he know? Did he _really_ know? He knew Dad's story--just as the Empire used its citizens as tools to serve its will, Dad had used the Empire as _his_ tool to get off of Corellia, shedding it as soon as the opportunity afforded itself on Mimban. Rebellion general Madine had been a career Imperial, but he'd turned his back on all of that, full of fire and conviction. But Dr. Zarander had remained with the Empire all the way through to the surrender of Mas Amedda. Ben didn't understand why.

Perhaps that needed to change.

"...Solo? Hey, Coruscant Central ATC here, you've gone off of autopilot. Come in, please." Zarander peered closely at the young resident as though searching for signs of illness.

Ben jumped, just a bit. "Sorry, sir. I was just..." Oh dear, how to _ask_ this? This had exactly nothing to do with romance but somehow the nerves felt even _worse_ than when the girls tried flirting with him on the Temple World. "Well, uh...I was just wondering...I know this is kinda random..."

Zarander snorted. "Come on, spit it out already, Solo. You don't even know if I'm going to be offended if you haven't actually _said_ it yet."

"It's not just you I'm worried about," the Force-telepath mumbled, half to himself. "But the thing is..." _Come on, just how many verbal stalling tactics can you come up with?_ he thought, trying hard not to roll his eyes at himself. "I just realized I don't really know anything about where you came from. The Empire, I mean...what you did, why you joined up. The things you saw." The elder doctor's eyes narrowed with suspicion. Then he glanced around, checking to see if anyone at the other tables might have picked up on their conversation. "I...I mean, I know things _about_ that time," Ben forged on, "stuff I've been told. But I don't know anything about the people who thought...about good people, who joined up. I'm curious. I want to understand; that's all."

"You're serious." Zarander studied his younger colleague. "I doubt it's gonna be easy to hear for someone like you--where _you_ come from, that is. A lot of people want the myths they think are their glory days to come back, and let's just say you've been right to the center of that. A lot of people..." Ben didn't hear the exact words, but he could sense the euphemistic substitution Zarander was making with that nebulous description. "They don't want to remember what it was _really_ like back then, because there's no glory in the truth, like there is in their myths. It's a lot easier for them to just imagine the years of the Empire as a black hole surrounded by a ring of light on either side, where everything inside might as well not exist."

_And to look at people like me, like I might just suck them in to where they'll never return._

That, Dr. Solo heard as clearly as if Zarander had spoken it out loud. _Can't acknowledge it_ , Ben remind himself, _can't act like you heard it_... Still, he had to find _some_ way to answer before things got even more uncomfortable than they already were.

"You've been gracious to me," Ben finally said. "Giving me a chance, training me, even letting me use the Force a bit around here. I think listening is the least I can do in return."

"Whatever the Jedi were when I was young," Zarander quietly replied, "they certainly never _answered to_ anyone--just waltzed on in and expected everyone to snap to on their command, never bothered to _earn_ their place. I never heard about _listening_ as one of their strengths. At least, not to anybody but themselves. So, um...yeah...there's a veterans' pub on the edge of Markon District called The Silver Flame, where we can talk and not have to deal with any...difficult kinds of attention."

A knot formed at the bottom of Ben's stomach. A veterans' pub...that was a roundabout way of identifying the place as a gathering venue for Imperial sympathizers. _Maybe_ even Imperial Remnant types--the ones who were rumored to be breaking with Republic society entirely, trickling their way out of the Core Worlds and into the Unknown Regions. "You sure this is somewhere I should go?" Ben asked, his voice nearly a whisper. "I don't think it would look good if I got jumped. Or if the place got raided and we were there."

"Nah...if Quintyle or his guys hear resurgence-type stuff, they shut it down," Zarander assured him. "I'm not gonna vouch for every customer who goes in there, but Sergeant Menell's not the kind to want any trouble and _I'm_ not a fan of getting arrested or shaken down by Republic spooks."

That certainly wasn't Ben's _only_ concern, of course--but even though he wasn't much of a barfly himself, Dad had certainly made sure to give Ben plenty of advice on how to look after himself in a whole assortment of rough venues, ranging from grungy Outer Rim cantinas to swanky gangster-run gaming houses. And the Force would go with him, too.

Ben nodded. "All right. I'll be keeping a low profile, but if you're sure this is all right, I'm in."

"Tomorrow night when we get off shift, then," Zarander decided. "Might want to bring a change of clothes with you, though." He pointed at Dr. Solo's coat and name badge--and the woven, greyscale Jedi tunic he wore underneath. " _That_ might not help with keeping a low profile."

A small, lopsided grin flitted across the younger physician's face. "Yeah, I kind of figured."

Dr. Solo adjusted the hood of his charcoal-grey cloak over the embellishments that formed a sunburst around his mask, then gave the hood one last experimental tug with the Force to make sure it wasn't about to slip off as soon as he started walking.

Uncle Luke had been...well, a lot less than thrilled, when Ben had started pressing him at about thirteen to let him wear a battle mask when he sparred. But the long and short of it was, no matter how much Ben tried to keep his emotions off his face during duels, he just kept on giving himself away without his opponents having to sift through the currents of the Force. Eventually, Uncle Luke had relented, and over the years Ben had gathered a collection of masks he wore for sparring, training learners, or the rare occasions when circumstances might call him away from his medical studies to undertake some sort of mission.

This particular mask had a more ceremonial than tactical look to it; humanoid features were readily discernible in black, with silver ornamentation tracing around them, then radiating out into a plated starburst that reminded him of layers of leaves, or of a beetle's carapace. The mask wore a neutral expression, more graceful, perhaps, than intimidating--the sort of thing he might wear on an official mission where the prospect of combat was uncertain, hopefully not expected at all.

"You _sure_ you want to wear that?" Zarander asked. There had been a law in the Imperial days against wearing identity-concealing masks outside of performing official duties of the Empire, but that law had been repealed after the fall of the Empire to accommodate the various species and belief systems that believed in hiding their faces from view for whatever reason. And from what Ben had seen, there'd be a couple other masked patrons of The Silver Flame.

" _Like I said_ ," Ben replied, " _I don't want to cause you any problems._ " The mask's vocal modulator lowered his voice and added a layer of mechanical distortion, which would make it much more difficult for anyone to get a voiceprint on him. While the effect could sound strange at first, Ben had found that if he spoke softly, the vocoder could acquire a strangely gentle sort of tone. " _I'm...doing something else to try and keep any attention away. But this makes it easier._ "

Zarander wasn't about to ask here, exactly _what_ it was Ben was doing, considering the Force was _potentia non grata_ around here, but his silence in itself served as confirmation he understood. It wasn't mental manipulation Ben was using, but a meditative calming exercise that--at least with non-Force-sensitives--was just enough to give himself an unassuming, perhaps even slightly boring sort of presence. Except for Zarander, that is. Ben was _very_ interested in whatever it was Zarander was going to have to say. "All right, then," he said. "Let's go."

With that, the two doctors locked down their speeders outside the pub, and headed inside.

"Hey, Rylkir!" A rich-toned human with close-cropped hair...they _all_ seemed to be humans, Dr. Solo noted without surprise...waved at them and headed their way. "Long time no see. How've the RepCivs been treating you?" _Republic civilians_ , Dr. Solo translated to himself.

"Some better than others," Dr. Zarander admitted. "You know how it is, Quint."

"Yeah, for sure." Quint...Quintyle?...sighed. "Had a bunch of little shits throwing marlello eggs at the place a couple weeks ago. I chased them off and they haven't been back since. At least the cleanup wasn't too bad--beats graffiti; can't wash that stuff off with a hose."

Ben winced beneath his mask, feeling blood rush to the tips of his ears.

"No one was hurt, I hope?" Zarander asked.

The pub's owner shook his head. "Thankfully no. Those entitled brats weren't brave enough to stick around once they realized someone was after them. They want to be all big and bold like their Rebel parents--"

Mercifully, Zarander interrupted his fellow veteran's train of thought. "To be honest, Quint, if I had to take a guess, I'd say the kids whose parents let them run around doing that kind of stuff _weren't_ actually Rebels at all. Probably more like sympathizers who never actually got their hands dirty, or people who _wish_ they'd been sympathizers back then, so they and their kids go around 'compensating' with stupid stunts like that since they've got no clue about the real thing."

"Still," Quintyle remarked, "you have to hope they don't graduate from throwing eggs to grenades, or setting roadside bombs, if they don't get disabused of that nonsense fast."

"So did you call CorSec?" Zarander asked.

"No point," he grunted. "The cams and I didn't get a good enough look, and you know what a potluck it is trying to get someone who'll actually pursue the case."

"Let me know if someone gets hurt, though," said Dr. Zarander. "If need be I can look over the injuries, help you collect evidence that might catch the perps. I really hope it doesn't come down to that, though."

"Me too." The bartender paused, seeming to only just notice Zarander's guest. _Good_ , Dr. Solo thought to himself. _Means this obscurity meditation's working for now._ "Who's this with you?"

Zarander glanced over at his younger colleague. "Guess I should make some introductions. Sort of." He gestured at the pub owner. "This is Quintyle Menell...he was an Army sergeant in the 291st Legion, and now he runs this place."

Ben nodded silently at first--then realized he ought to show a bit more openness, at least, even in this guise. These were supposed to be his people for now, after all. _The people Grandfather helped lead_ , he thought with a twinge he couldn't quite decipher. And here he was now, masked, in their presence. He reached out a gloved hand to Sergeant Menell. " _Pleased to meet you_ ," he mumbled self-consciously as they shook hands.

Dr. Zarander took over from here. "This is an acquaintance of mine."

"Another medical guy?" Menell asked?

Zarander nodded. "It wasn't easy for him to come here..."

Gentle sympathy radiated from Quintyle Menell as he regarded the figure--Ben--before him. "Reconnecting can be harder for people in some professions than others, son, but it's an important step. I understand that, having everyone around you think the fangs are going to come out the second they turn their backs on you. You can take that off if you want, now that you're inside..."

Ben's throat went dry as he shook his head.

"All right," Menell conceded. "Stars know we all understand having to watch out for spies; those habits never do die all the way. Can't, considering where we're at. Rylkir's good people, but if you're ever feeling up to it, try talking to Chief Betelson over there." Ben's gaze followed Menell's pointing finger to a table along the side wall, where a tanned figure who looked about Zarander's age...maybe younger, he corrected himself, if the sun had weathered his skin...sat alone nursing a drink and reading something on his datapad. "Took a good couple of years after he started coming, for him to take off the mask. I figure he could vouch for our bunch a lot better than I could. But anyway...I promise I won't bring it up again."

Dr. Solo nodded, eking out a quiet, " _Thank you_."

"Well, then..." Sergeant Menell grabbed a few sheets of...no, it wasn't cardboard; too thin for that...some kind of heavy stationery, though...and started heading towards the back of the restaurant, and Zarander started to follow. Ben took his lead. "I figure you'll need some time to look over the menu." Ahh...so _that_ was what Menell was carrying with him. "We don't do holoscreens in the tables or biometric pay here," the proprietor explained. We value our customers' right to privacy."

Zarander had explained that part in advance, when Ben had raised the possibility of flagging someone's attention in the financial sector--with a name like his, there was always the outside chance some computer slicer on a tabloid payroll...or even that of one of the better-organized Imperial Remnant groups...could decide to get nosy. For now, Ben simply replied, " _It's much appreciated._ "

He followed Zarander and Menell up a set of three stairs, onto a raised area lining the back wall of the pub that could have been a stage in whatever previous incarnation this place had had, before becoming The Silver Flame. At least for now, they were the only guests in this part of the restaurant. Menell gestured at a square table in the corner, setting the paper menus in front of the two seats that backed up to the walls. "We've got all kinds of drinks here, all the way from the fancy stuff, to the frontier recipes and even my take on hyperdrive-room whiskey, if you're feeling _that_ kind of sentimental."

"Dunno about _him_ ," Zarander replied, jabbing a thumb at Dr. Solo, "but I can't say _I'm_ there yet. That stuff could peel even more paint off a hull than stim-caf."

Ben shook his head. The doctor in him shuddered to think exactly how many stimulants might have been packed into _that_ sort of drink. That would have to be another story for later, he decided as he sat down, taking the seat against the back wall, which overlooked the entire pub. Zarander took the chair to his right, against the other wall. That was when it dawned on Dr. Solo exactly _why_ Menell had seated them there: it was exactly the spot the _Jedi_ in him would have chosen, affording him the best view of any oncoming threats, and shielding him from the possibility of attacks from behind.

With that the pub proprietor left. Once they had the area to themselves, Dr. Solo leaned forward and asked, " _Are you sure he's not a part-time psychologist?_ " He hoped the mask's vocoder didn't completely strip away the evidence of the small smile on his lips as he spoke.

The twinkle in Zarander's eye confirmed to Ben his intention had been understood. "Nah...Quint's no shrink, or anything like it, but he's got plenty of experience dealing with whatever problems walk in his door."

" _I can tell_ ," Ben said. " _I have some...experience dealing with people with trauma disorders. There's a lot of that around, where I come from. The things Sergeant Menell says and does...I can tell he's more knowledgeable than average._ " What Ben didn't include was that the people he knew with post-traumatic stress disorder not only included family members, but he'd even been the first to lead his uncle Luke to a diagnosis and the treatment he needed.

"I'd say that's some experience we've unfortunately got very much in common," Zarander acknowledged. "People like to think Imperials are a heartless horde. Would've been easier if we really were all as steel-souled as those old Sep droids from the Clone Wars. But a lot of us...we're not. The war comes home with you, and there's nowhere to take it lots of the time except out for a drink or two, or three. Or just... _out_. Out of civilization, or out of life completely."

Ben well remembered what Uncle Luke had told him about Sandy, the former Imperial turned Rebel, who had taken the out-of-civilization...or at least the major powers...route, and probably would remain there for life. At least Sandy had found some sort of path in life he considered worth living, one that gave him peace away from all the shadows of the war. The mysterious folds of the Force through hyperspace itself saw to that. But others...there were too many Alderaan survivors--and Mom, it seemed, had heard of every one--who had checked out. Ben sensed in Zarander a sickeningly familiar sort of hollow where the missing should have been. A hollow with the potential to grow ever more immense with the right push.

Dr. Solo closed his eyes and drew in a steadying breath, relying on his mask to hide the signs of both. He didn't need that now, not with the shadows he sensed gathering within Zarander. " _Are there people you knew...who left?_ "

"Yeah. Some of them just up and disappeared. Those are the ones I think left the Republic. It's possible to do that if you know the right connections. Not that I'll reveal those, of course." A chill traveled up Ben's spine at the intensely _personal_ feeling he drew from what Zarander was saying. The older doctor was thinking about it. Thinking about leaving. Pursuing one of the Remnant factions, maybe even the rumors of a 'true' successor, which he'd heard Mom and Dad refer to as the First Order. 

"But other people..." Zarander studied the details of Ben's mask before he continued, as if searching in it for lost reflections. "Seems like it comes in waves. I'll go for a while and things are fine, on the outside, anyway. And then...there's a death notice, buried deep in the news somewhere. Or I come in here, and Quint's heard about another one."

Ben reached for Zarander's hand. He might not be able to show his true face or voice in an Imperialist pub, but even with his gloves on, this, at least was something he could offer that was real. " _I'm sorry_ ," he said. " _Is there anything I...or anyone...can do?_ "

Zarander shook his head, and Ben withdrew his hand, dreading that perhaps he was too late. "Not much. There are a few things I could do on the medical side for some people, if they actually came through my door...but you've got to consider how _hard_ that really is. There's a health system for veterans--in name--but it's not for _us_ , not really. That fact's pretty clear. ' _Kark_ you very much for your service and quit taking up oxygen in my office.' That's what a lot of people figure is gonna happen the second they set foot in there with service-related problems. And there've been enough stories where it really _has_ happen to know the risk is real. 

"You see what it can take to even come _here_ , to somewhere like The Silver Flame, to unburden. What it feels like to be watched, by people who might be curious to know who you are out there, for the wrong reasons." Ben nodded. Being discovered as a Jedi in this venue was terrifying, to say the least. But being discovered as an Imperial or sympathizer by those out in the real world--he had underestimated what it meant for Dr. Zarander to do this in the open. "The fact that people feel they have to come here in veils or masks, to a damn _pub_ , so they don't feel like they're setting themselves up as fodder for blood sport on the outside...just imagine what kind of a mountain they'd have to climb to go to a veterans' clinic. Some lucky bastards manage to get a discreet referral to someone they can trust is safe for them. Who _gets it_. Most of us, though...we're just getting by. Or going."

Dr. Solo reflected somberly on the caution his own family had had to exercise when it came to dealing with the attempt on his life by the malevolent Guardian in the Dark, and the aftermath. How only a few, like the gentle Grindalid nurse Mychatt had been briefed in and for the most part, the family--and Jedi--had had to deal with it themselves. That, however, was a whole other story. One that, if it was ever to be told to Rylkir Zarander, would have to be told another day. And most certainly in another _place_. Was this how it really ought to be for those who were once soldiers of the Empire, forced to bury whatever they'd suffered away from the light of the sun?

" _I don't know how much good I could do_ ," Ben reflected, " _but I wouldn't turn someone away if they came to me. That is, if they were willing to trust_ me _, and I know that's a hell of a huge hurdle to overcome. For now, though...I just hope I haven't bothered you, talking about all of this._ "

"Believe me," Zarander insisted, "I wouldn't have come with you if I wasn't up for it. So don't start second-guessing--"

The sound of footsteps ascending to their level stopped the Imperial doctor mid-sentence. "Evening, Doc." Ben refocused his meditations to bury himself in the Force as the waiter looked to Zarander and asked, "Will you be having your usual?"

Dr. Zarander nodded. "Sure. How's the situation with the kids, Kellen?"

"Still nothing on getting visitation, if that's what you're asking." Zarander nodded. "I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but at this point I've almost started wondering if it would be best to wait a few years until the boys are eighteen, and then send them a holo and hope they'll be willing to give it a listen someday."

Dr. Solo's colleague frowned. "Sorry to hear that, man...I wish I knew what to tell you. You know I'd write you a character witness if I could..."

"Yeah, except they'd figure you're conspiring with me to lie about all the banthashit my ex claims I did. 'Imperial conspirator' goes together a lot better than 'Imperial character witness'..." The waiter rolled his eyes, then turned to the masked doctor, clearly glad for some sort of excuse, however unusual, to escape that particular conversation. "Sorry...um...didn't mean to ignore you there. You're...are you planning on ordering anything, what with all the...um..." He gestured near his face. "The regalia you're wearing?"

" _It's all right_ ," Ben mumbled, nervous the waiter Kellen might somehow hear through the distortion of his vocoder to the Jedi medical resident he really was. " _I'll just have Corellian bark-root soda...I can manage that with a straw._ "

"Ahh...you're Corellian Garrison?" the waiter guessed. "A lot of the guys posted there acquired the taste, so you don't have to feel awkward about that--we carry it, no problem."

Dr. Solo was intensely grateful in that moment to have his mask to hide his clenched jaw from the waiter and Dr. Zarander. Dad had told him _plenty_ about what the Empire--and that Corellian Garrison specifically--had done to his homeworld when they enslaved it wholesale to build ships for their fleet. Then again, it _was_ Ben's fault he hadn't thought carefully enough to keep Kellen from speculating in that direction, so he forced himself to confine his reply to, " _I know some people who have been to Corellia._ "

"Hard _not_ to cross paths with Corellia vets, even for short-term conscripts," Kellen agreed, and mercifully left it at that. "I'll have your drinks right out."

As the waiter left, Zarander leaned forward and asked, "Just the soda? We're not on duty tomorrow--not like one would hurt..."

Ben shook his head, matching Zarander's posture as he said, " _Nah...Dad may have hit more than his fair share of cantinas--but not me. I've never been able to make myself do it. I hate the idea of not being in control--_ " He felt as though Zarander could _see_ his skin crawl at the words, 'not being in control.' All Ben could think of was the Guardian in the Dark, stealing his voice to curse and taunt Mom and Dad, then twisting his entire body as he shot it through with excruciating pain, dragging him down to the very edge of death. No...anything that could mimic even a _tiny_ fragment of that ghastly helplessness and desperation was _very_ unwelcome with Ben.

" _And_ ," Ben added, pushing his mind with great effort away from the horrid memory before it could break his Force meditations, " _I kind of think getting drunk would make me a DWI on two legs. I probably wouldn't even have to get in my speeder._ "

"Oh..." Zarander's eyes flared wide. "Yeah, you're probably right, now that I think about it. Alcohol and...um...weapons...don't generally get along too well."

True, Ben _did_ have his saber under his cloak--but that wasn't what either of them really meant; it was his _powers_ they were both thinking of. Though when he thought about weapons and alcohol...specifically _blasters_ and alcohol...he couldn't help a loud snort. _Alcohol and blasters definitely got along great where Greedo was concerned!_ He knew he shouldn't be laughing at the death of being--it was un-Jedi-like _and_ un-doctor-like, but the way Dad had told the story--

Zarander's brow was furrowed now with concern. "Is your vocabulator malfunctioning?"

" _No, no..._ " Ben grinned unseen. "I'm _malfunctioning!_ " That earned Ben a muted laugh. " _I was just thinking of a funny story Dad told me about a cantina fight. Him and some lowlife...a gangster's mercenary_ ," he rushed to clarify before the Imperial doctor could get the wrong idea, " _no one you would've known._ "

"Some places can be like that...not just on the Outer Rim. Now, Quint wouldn't tolerate anything like that in _here_ \--that's for sure. But I had more than enough of my share of _lawlessness_ growing up in the Old Republic to last me _more_ than a lifetime." The wave of honest revulsion that emanated from Dr. Zarander as he spoke of the Old Republic hit Ben like the blast from a starship's engines firing up way too close for comfort, and he flinched despite himself.

"I'm not talking little, petty stuff," Zarander practically snarled in self-defense. "Nobody ever heard about it here in the Core Worlds--it was inconvenient news, and even if they did, what the hell does it matter when it's happening in another star system, on another planet, and what you do there _literally can't affect_ what happens here because you're outside the planetary atmosphere, even outside the heliosphere, for that matter. You can kark up a self-contained little world parsecs away, and it doesn't matter worth a damn, because there are plenty more out there to pick from."

This, of course, was about the _most_ inopportune venue Ben could possibly have imagined, to point out that the nature of the Force was such that it truly interconnected _all_ things, that all life in the galaxy, however distant, could and _did_ have an effect on the rest. What Dr. Solo _could_ say to Zarander was, " _People don't realize what their apathy is doing. It's easy to hide from it out in the stars--but that can't last forever. There are always consequences eventually_."

"Yeah...and _that's_ why the Old Republic had to fall. That damned _apathy_ thing, coupled with a bloated sense of bureaucratic self-importance. They kept on kicking the can down the road because no one wanted a vote on places like Halcyon on _their_ record. They kept on ignoring all their broken promises to maintain the good of the Republic for _all_ of the Republic, and they didn't give a damn what that meant to people's _lives_...not until it cracked right down the middle and left a mess so great that only an Empire could fix it. You know when the Emperor sent his troops to Halcyon, that was the first time in my life that the fighting ever really _stopped_?"

" _I haven't heard much about Halcyon_ ," Ben admitted. He'd taken plenty of lessons in history and galactic navigation--Uncle Luke had insisted on the former, and Dad and R2-D2 on the latter--but they'd never really stuck as well as his studies in xenobiology, comparative psychology, or galactic sociology. Ah...there _was_ something in that, that he _did_ remember, come to think of it. " _I know Halcyon is where the Ch'iiktichi species comes from--not sure I'm saying that right?_ "

"Close enough," Zarander replied. "You're not any further off than I am, anyway."

" _They're rodentiform, if I remember right...surface-dwelling, though, nocturnal, I think?_ " Zarander nodded again, as Dr. Solo's Force alerted him the waiter was approaching again. " _Was there fighting between them and the offworlder colonists?_ "

Sure enough, before Dr. Zarander could answer, Kellen had arrived with their drinks. "Supersonic Screwdriver for you..." He sat a strong-smelling, mixed cocktail before Zarander...some sort of hard liquor mixed with fruit juice, kind of like Dad might drink when he wanted to enjoy the experience rather than just pounding down a shot. "And a Corellian bark-root soda, Windrunner brand, for the mystery gentleman." The soda came in a frosted mug--that brought a hidden smile; Ben hadn't seen _that_ in a long time--with a steel straw sticking out.

" _Nice touch_ ," Dr. Solo said, pointing to the mug.

"We like attention to the details around here," Kellen replied with a smile.

"Thanks," Zarander added for both of them, and Kellen took the hint and made his exit, Dr. Solo wondering just what sort of turns their conversation was to take next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: Though I'm not worried about those of you who already know me, I'd like to make it clear that if you're new to my stories, just because my characters may espouse particular political views that make sense for their backgrounds and their universes, that does not necessarily mean I espouse those same beliefs. Understanding Zarander, for instance, does not mean I approve of everything he says and does.
> 
> CANON NOTE: Though this takes place in the AU of A Healing Force, the stories Dr. Zarander tells about his past in the Empire are also canon to the AU of Another Set of Eyes.
> 
> Soundtrack: ("Recuse Myself" by Demon Hunter)


	2. Part 2

Once they were alone again, Ben lifted the chin of his mask just slightly away from his face, and snuck the straw in for a sip. With the hood of his cloak still up, and the backswept embellishments of the mask still providing some coverage, the doctor in training hoped that would be enough to keep his distinctive complexion from giving him away. He'd been teased in school on Chandrila for that when he was very little--not so much on Coruscant though, and definitely not on the Temple World, where Uncle Luke, Dad, and all the other teachers had made it clear that sort of childish mockery was unbecoming of a Jedi.

There had been that damned tabloid headline when he'd rejoined Republic civilization to start med school, though: 'The Return of the Scoundrel and the Speckled Prince!' The shot at Dad had annoyed Ben to no end, but the rest had made him want to crawl under his desk, not sure which part was worse. Thankfully, once he'd immersed himself in his studies and proven himself a disappointingly undramatic subject for scrutiny, the gossip mags had found something better to discuss--at least, better for him--but still.

"How is it?" Zarander asked, bringing his attention back to the present.

Ben swallowed, grinning beneath the mask as he withdrew the straw. "Excellent!" he proclaimed. "I don't think I've ever heard of this brand, but it's definitely some good stuff..."

"I'm not a big soda guy," Zarander said--not that Ben was too surprised at that, "but knowing Quint, it probably comes from some high-end brewery. Might even be one that sprang up more recently, as in postwar."

"Bet the Windrunner guys would totally lose it if they knew some had wound up here," Ben remarked.

"Probably so," Zarander agreed. "Now, what were we talking about? Oh, right...the Ch'iiktichi, and if we ever fought them."

Dr. Solo nodded.

"There was some skirmishing here and there," Dr. Zarander explained, "but mostly we were on one continent and they were on the other, so it wasn't exactly a constant thing. They weren't the real problem on Halcyon, though. It was the other humans and near-humans. One faction would feel aggrieved, protests turned into riots, riots turned into a coup, the coup turned into civil war, then fast forward a year or so from the last outbreak, and do it all over again. You know how messed-up a planet is when everyone who can afford it has air-raid shelters, or rents space in one. Not that that always protected you if the other side felt like sending infantry to take a closer look, but it helped some."

"This was a Republic world?" Ben queried, aghast. He thought he'd remembered the Ch'iiktichi being a Republic species, but he'd been a lot more concerned with remembering their biological classification than he had their political alignment. From the sound of it, he'd missed the mark, and badly. Uncle Luke had told him what the Hutts had done on Tatooine, but from what he'd heard growing up, until the Empire came, no one had ever pretended Tatooine belonged to anyone but the Hutt Cartel.

"Oh, yes, you better believe it," Zarander growled. "Had two senators and everything--one from the Ch'iiktichi side, and one from ours. But you know the nonsense the Old Republic used to go on about--same as this one tries to--about not scaring or 'provoking' people by doing anything so bold as to keep a standing army. You know about the Republic Judicials, right? They taught you about that where you went to school?"

"Some," Ben said, "but I didn't always pay the best attention to all that Old Republic stuff, except what I really had to. There was thousands of years worth of it to memorize before the Clone Wars, and I really didn't care about naming every Supreme Chancellor ten millennia back..."

"Heh...none of us cared for that back then, even when the Old Republic was a thing," Zarander quipped. "The Empire did streamline that quite a bit.

"But anyway," he continued, "here's a history lesson from the ground. The Republic Judicials were exactly what it sounds like--law enforcement. CorSec in space, basically. Their job was to do things like answer distress calls from stranded passenger cruisers, harass pirates off of trade routes, or arrest corrupt officials, when the Republic bothered to do that. They were decently competent at doing that, as far as I remember. But their job was not to fight wars...and when it came to that, they were in way over their heads. You know what they treated Halcyon as, the one time they bothered trying to do something about it? A police action. That's all it could be with them, all they had the training for. I feel kind of sorry for them when I really think about it. Sure, they brought some Jedi along, but that didn't really change things with them. It was just eighty Judicials and a few Jedi there to put down the coup--and that because that particular bunch had Separatist leanings before the Seps really became a thing. They hauled some people off to Coruscant to try and throw in prison, but after they left, what the hell did the Republic expect to happen?"

In a low voice, one that Ben hoped Zarander could still understand through the mask's vocabulator, he asked, "Did you ever have any real peace growing up?"

The elder doctor shook his head, and confirmed Dr. Solo's worst suspicions. "Like I said, not until the Empire came. Not until they posted two Star Destroyers to the system. Sure, things changed--more rules and restrictions than we'd ever had as a self-ruled Republic world, but I didn't have to worry about getting caught in crossfire on the street, or bombed if someone's surgical strike in the neighborhood went bad. The Empire found the instigators from all the factions, rounded them up, and executed them all at once in the capital. They stripped all the bodies naked and dumped them into the same mass grave. That finally made the point. Factional displays stopped almost overnight."

The approval Dr. Solo sensed towards the Empire's oppressive measures...ugh--Ben could hardly fathom looking at the execution of Palpatine's cruel orders in that way. Yet the starkness of the contrast against the restless, haunted sense he'd felt from Zarander as he'd spoken of the constant infighting...as awful as it was, the merciless action of the Empire represented a pitiful sort of salvation to Zarander. And the wonder of it was that in light of all this, Dr. Zarander still hadn't become the perfect embodiment of those things he professed to value so deeply.

As if anticipating Ben's next questions, Zarander took up the next part of his story. "Didn't take long for me to start looking into signing on with the Navy," he continued. "What we had on Halcyon was mostly infantry and some Stormtroopers, but they were plenty nice enough to get me pointed in the right direction when I told them I'd like to dedicate my service as an Imperial doctor. The Empire put me through med school, and I got my first posting right after I graduated, on the Consolidator."

"Had you always wanted to go into medicine?" Ben asked. "Or was that something that came later, with the Empire?"

"Well...a lot of us on Halcyon learned some basic first aid so we could take care of each other when it wasn't safe to go to a medcenter or even a local clinic. Some doctors did distance consults too, and relied on the patient's friends and families to actually treat the patient. Which before you ask," Zarander added, "sometimes crossed the line into totally illegal, when it dealt with complicated matters. Sometimes even minor surgeries."

"I've heard of that on other worlds," Ben mentioned, "places where there's not a lot of settlement, or other problems. Even places like Nar Shaddaa, where there's just a lot of poverty. A lot of Hutt worlds, come to think of it. So you did those kinds of things sometimes?"

"Not any of the really seriously questionable stuff," Zarander clarified, as Ben snuck the straw beneath his mask for another sip of bark-root soda. "But yeah, the basics, for sure. And not just for humans. Having pets was a major luxury on Halcyon, if you wanted to take care of them right. But there were a lot of neighborhood strays, from the better times when humans first settled. Feathered dogs, tookas, that sort of thing. I used to take care of them too, try to make their lives easier. But no, I never thought of it as a career path until the Empire came. I couldn't have afforded that kind of schooling. I guess I would've taken a trade or something, if they hadn't come, but believe me, I am very, very grateful for the opportunities I've had, to really find what I wanted to do with my life and actually do it."

Ben nodded. It just seemed such a shame that was what it had taken to give Dr. Zarander that kind of a chance. But it had brought him here to Coruscant, to the Nema Memorial Medcenter, for a second career where he could really use his talents for the best. But...what about his time in the Empire? What had he really used his talents for? He'd been cleared of war crimes, sure, but according to Mom it had been doctors who supervised the interrogation droids Vader had used to try and break her. Doctors, though the name seemed wholly unworthy of their real profession. "So what was it like once you started practicing?" he asked. "What did you do, exactly?"

That brought a wistful smile to the older physician's face. "I started out as one of the urgent care doctors," he said. "That's a job that will always keep your hands full. People who've never been aboard a Star Destroyer don't realize exactly what the medbays are like on a ship that size. They're actually small hospitals, when you get down to it, because you're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-five to fifty thousand people to care for. That means you need the same resources you'd need to take care of a small town on board. By the time I got to the Bellator--my last posting--I was the ship's head of Flight Medicine."

"So," Ben carefully probed, "did that mean you were in charge of all the medical staff on board?"

Zarander's brows cast his eyes into deep shadow. He lowered his voice. "I know what you're asking." He took a long sip of his drink. "And the answer is no. You're thinking of the Experimental Medicine division, and that's a whole other chain of command from Flight Medicine. Our job was to keep Imperial personnel healthy. Theirs...it could be a lot of things. But they weren't part of the regular medbay staff. Things weren't exactly comfortable between our two divisions a lot of the time. Though I did work with a few of their guys once, on a project that some of us had hoped was going to save a whole lot of lives...hang on." 

Dr. Zarander raised a hand to signal the waiter. "Gonna need a little more for this one. I'll definitely be putting my speeder on autopilot lock tonight." Also known as the 'drunk's best friend,' the autopilot lock mode was an automatic go-home command that took the 'driver' to their residence with no deviations allowed save from those ordered by Coruscant Central Air Traffic Control.

As Kellen took Zarander's order for a refill, Dr. Solo morosely wondered just what sort of story this would turn out to be. Ben almost didn't hear the waiter when he asked if he would like a refill on his soda, as well. When he finally realized he was being spoken to, he shook his head, and Kellen headed back to the bar to retrieve another Supersonic Screwdriver.

Once the waiter completed his delivery, Zarander took a long swig, then heaved a shuddering sigh. Dr. Solo held his silence, sensing that Zarander would speak only when he was ready. "Did you ever get a chance to meet any of the original Clone Troopers? I heard there might've been a few of them that made it out your way..."

"My parents met a few," Ben confirmed, "even worked closely with one of them." Both had spoken extremely highly of Commander Rex, one of the few clones who had successfully defied the slaughter order against the Jedi, describing him as a great leader and a tactical genius. "They told me about him, but I never met him, at least not that I can remember. Or any of the others."

"That's a shame," Zarander said. "I got to meet quite a few of them in the service. For having all come from the same genetic template, they were really quite an extraordinary bunch, all of them with their own individual quirks. When I was first looking to join up, there were still a pretty good number of them serving as Stormtroopers, and I ended up just walking up to a couple of them on the street to see if they could point me in the right direction."

Ben's eyes went wide behind his mask. "Wouldn't that have been dangerous? What if they'd thought you were a threat?"

"I guess it was kind of stupid," he acknowledged. "I didn't really know better back then, though, because we never really had organized forces on Halcyon--more paramilitary kind of stuff, with the one that happened to be backed by the party in charge at the time being called the army. But once they figured out I was serious, they sent me to a medic on their squad, a guy who went by Sticks. He's the one who got me talking with the right recruiters and helped me get the ball rolling.

"But Sticks and the other clones...it wasn't that long after I started med school, before they started feeling their age. You know the Kaminoans accelerated their growth?" Ben nodded, an uneasy feeling creeping into his stomach. It was the Jedi who had commissioned the Grand Army of the Republic--with Sith interference, Uncle Luke had suspected, given who Supreme Chancellor Palpatine had turned out to be, but still, the Republic had embraced the idea of mass-produced people, bred for battle. They'd been mere children, chronologically, when they'd first entered battle, even though they were biologically men in their early twenties. "Well, it wasn't just their early development. Their whole lifespans were accelerated. That guy your parents knew...he would've been an old man by the time you were born, and by now? Long gone." Zarander shook his head.

"You watched it happen," Ben realized. The words rang with a hollow tone even before the vocoder in his mask got to them. "You saw them get old before their time..."

Zarander sighed. "Yeah. The change by the time I graduated med school and got assigned to my residency on the Consolidator was a real shock. Most of them were forced out of service, put out of the way somewhere, as more natural-born recruits started filling the ranks. The best of the best were kept on to help train the new generation...the ones who were stable enough. From what I heard, some of them didn't last too long after Order 66." 

The slaughter of the Jedi. Ben's gaze dropped to the table at that, and his hands clenched. Oh, Force, it was as if he remembered that day himself--there'd been the awful nightmares, the ones the Guardian in the Dark had stoked in him, and this one horrific dream involving a fire, Jedi everywhere, fallen dead...but that was all it had been. A nightmare, not a vision--or if it had been a vision of anything, it had been one of the past. Of that day...of Order 66. 

Grandfather had been there. He'd led the attack on the Coruscant Temple, in his first action as Darth Vader. And the Clone Troopers had followed--forced, most of them, by the control chips implanted in their brains.

"I guess they were really attached to their Jedi commanders," Zarander continued. "The Jedi encouraged it, from what I heard, endeared themselves to the troops so they'd be personally loyal, not just to the Republic. So they wouldn't believe the Jedi could actually be capable of anything like the assassination attempt on the Chancellor." 

The pressure kept building up within Ben. The assassination attempt--it had to be a lie; it had to be. Yet even Uncle Luke seemed unsure as to what had really taken place. He'd managed to put together fragments. 

Grandfather himself had been the one to warn the Council about Palpatine. The Council had started out intending to arrest him, leaving Grandfather behind as they feared the connection between him and the Chancellor. But Grandfather had pursued anyway, and by the time he reached the Supreme Chancellor's office, the arrest plan had shattered completely and the rage of Sith and Jedi melded almost into one--to Grandfather it had seemed as if both combatants...not just the Sith Lord...now meant, wholeheartedly, to kill.

What it was that led to that, Uncle Luke--and apparently Grandfather himself now--was lost to time. Palpatine could have twisted the other Jedi's mind somehow. Or maybe that had been the other's plan all along. Or perhaps Grandfather had mistaken the other Jedi's intent completely. Either way, it was in that moment Grandfather chose his side to become Darth Vader.

Do you believe that now? Dr. Solo longed to ask. The treason, the assassination...do you think that's what they all were? What we are now?

But he could not. He could not. He forced his hands under the table, but still they clenched tight. 

I am a doctor, he told himself. A first-year resident in training, yes, but I am already sworn to heal all people, of all species and temperaments, who seek my services. Whatever they believe in, I believe in their life, first and foremost. Zarander was his supervisor, not his patient...but still, better to practice such habits of the mind outside of the hospital, away from the Temple World, so they would hold when they were most needed.

"Hey..." Zarander was saying. "You okay there?"

That finally snapped Ben all the way back to the present. Whatever it was Dr. Zarander believed about the past, the concern Ben sensed in the present told him all he truly needed to know.

"Yeah," Dr. Solo managed. "Sorry about that." He went for another sip of soda, letting that ground him even more in the moment.

"I know it's kinda personal to you," Zarander offered in a modicum of an apology. "It is to me too, just...in a really different way, I guess." With that he proceeded to down half of his own drink before continuing on. "So the thing with the Clone Troopers was, they had this control chip implanted in them, in case the Jedi got out of hand, to make sure they'd actually do what they had to do. And I find myself thinking maybe not all the Jedi that were out there in the battlefields when Order 66 went down, had actually been in the know about the assassination attempt. At least, some of the clones really seemed to think that, regardless of whether it was actually true. Some of them took it hard. A few of the guys that had managed to stick around once I got posted to the Consolidator told me it really messed with their heads, made some of them unfit for service right then and there. Some of them even took their own lives...they had a pretty high suicide rate from what I understand."

"Being forced to do something like that...it's the worst nightmare," Ben mumbled. "The worst one possible." His fingers interlaced under the table, clenching together again, this time from an entirely different emotion. This one was remembrance. Remembrance of the horrible moment when the Guardian in the Dark seized control of him and spoke such words of hate through him. Remembrance of his father, staring through his son straight to the evil that had possessed him, threatening to singlehandedly plunge the entire galaxy into war for the sake of his child. The sight of his father had never terrified him so much as in that moment. Nor had the sight of his father made him so loved as in that same horrific moment.

Now was not the time to confess that he knew this by experience. So he summed it all up with, "I'd say they had every right to feel violated."

"If you ask me, the violation came a lot earlier than that, when the Jedi made them that way," Zarander growled. "Yeah, technically the Kaminoans did the actual dirty work, but it was on Jedi and Republic orders. It's not popular outside--" He gestured towards the street outside The Silver Flame. "--to talk about that in the current climate. But those are the facts. Sure, the Clones got some compensation for a few years by being great heroes of the Republic, but they were made to fade away fast. So like I said before, by the time I got in position aboard the Consolidator, there were still a few of the Clone Troopers around the Imperial Forces, serving as trainers. The rate they were aging meant we were going to lose all their experience and expertise fast.

Zarander stared into his drink as if the the rest of his thought might be found at the bottom. "And then there was just the fact that we were losing them. Some of us really did give a damn about that. I mean, whatever else you might say about our Empire, we did halt the Kaminoans' production lines, and we did actually step up to shoulder the burden ourselves instead of relying on throwaway people or machines to do the job. And some people cared enough that even some of the geneticists over in Experimental Medicine got convinced to try and see if they could do anything. Maybe reversing the accelerated aging wouldn't be possible, but at least giving them the rest of their lives to live out at a normal pace would've been some kind of recompense for all the shit the Republic put them through."

Oh, no... Warning klaxons sounded in Dr. Solo's head. I've got a really bad feeling about this. "I take it no solution was never found," he ventured.

The wave of nausea that rolled forth from Zarander's mind made Ben's own stomach heave for a second, before he could center himself back on the Force. "Worse," Zarander ground out. "A hell of a lot worse. A solution was found. Or at least, something we thought was gonna be one. We knew there was no guarantee of succeeding. And even though they didn't usually bother with it, the Experimentals only took volunteers. So it's true, the clones who signed up for the initial trial knew there were risks. But..." The elder doctor visibly shuddered this time, and the knuckles on the hand clenching his drink turned white.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Ben said.

"But I do want to!" Zarander rasped. "No one ever talks about it--it's just a historical footnote, or they attribute it to us and not to the karking genetic booby trap the Kaminoans programmed into them! People need to know...you need to know, that this is what the Republic and the old Jedi signed the dotted line on!"

Dr. Solo locked his eyes upon Zarander's. Even through his mask, he hoped the Imperial physician could sense, in the way non-Force-sensitives did sometimes, the gravity of his words. "Then I want to try and understand."

"All right." Zarander drew in a deep breath, then released it through his nose almost as Uncle Luke had taught Ben and the other Jedi students. "One of the trial subjects was aboard the Consolidator. It wasn't Sticks, but it was another clone medic, actually, a guy who went by 'Patcher.' My attending was working with one of the Experimentals to monitor Patcher's condition as we administered the gene therapy. We kept the dose low, of course--we weren't about to flood his system on an initial trial. Things seemed to go along all right for the first couple hours...and then his body went to complete and total autoimmune hell. Completely system-wide. Every organ was getting attacked, as though the therapy were the ultimate biological weapon instead of a cure. Skin, nervous system, digestive system, heart, lungs, karking everything! I can't even describe it--it was horrendous, and there was nothing, nothing we could do to stop it!"

Oh, Force! Ben just barely stopped the words before they could spill out. "What happened--why? How did it get past the Imperial geneticists?"

"The best we all can figure, the damned Kaminoans anticipated that someone would try to help the clones. They pre-programmed the autoimmune response into their genetic code--but we didn't detect it because whatever they did, they deliberately engineered the clones so the attack genes wouldn't activate except in a complete, living clone. Not in blood, or other sample tissues. We figure now that they keyed it to one of the body's hormones...cortisol, was our best guess...whose level changes as you go through the day, instead of remaining static like it would in a tissue sample. And being in a clinical trial is one of those things that would make cortisol fluctuate, all right. So I guess the guys in Experimental Medicine figured it was safe to move to the initial trial in clones, since the tests in isolated tissues seemed to be going well."

Anger flared in Dr. Solo's breast. He remembered Uncle Luke's words as the venom surged within him. Anger is not to be feared for its own sake. Righteous anger is the soul's natural way of pointing to a situation and crying out, THIS IS NOT RIGHT! This is not what we are to do or to be! It is what we do with our anger--if we release it without discipline--that it becomes a problem. Indeed, Ben's soul was screaming out in tune with that of Rylkir Zarander's. 

"They wanted you to see them suffer! They wanted it to be hidden until you got into trials with living clones! How is it they haven't been tried for war crimes?"

"Because with the Empire between them and us, who would bother?" Zarander muttered? "It's old history now, as far as everyone's concerned. Or like I said, people assume it was us. But it wasn't. We tried, damn it. Even if the Experimentals tried not to feel, about whatever they did, you better believe those of us in Flight Medicine felt everything!"

"I know," Ben whispered, as Zarander's anguish seared through his nervous system. "I truly know."

"Yeah," Zarander replied under his breath. "I guess you kinda do."

"I hate to ask," the young doctor continued, "but what happened to Patcher? And the other clones in the trial?"

At that, Dr. Zarander downed the last of his drink. "Thank all the stars, but there were only ten of them in the initial trial; Experimental Medicine decided to have some sense for once. As for Patcher...I'll never forget how, even though he was in absolute agony, he told us right before we induced a coma to make sure we recorded and tested everything, both as he was dying, and after he was dead. He was proud, he said, proud he'd gone to battle for the rest of the boys, proud that he'd taken this blaster bolt for them, so that we'd know what we knew now. Us...medical professionals, he meant, like him and me both." The faint sparkle of a tear danced at the corner of Dr. Zarander's eye. 

"After that," he continued, "we put him under. It was a last-ditch effort...not just to spare him the pain, but also to try and buy us just a little more time, to protect his nervous system and try and reverse the gene therapy, do something to save him. There was even a hope that the barbituric derivates we were using to induce the coma might even tamp down his immune system a bit. It didn't work, of course. Patcher died, and so did all the others. Kamino's message was received. After that there were no more attempts to extend their lifespans, other than typical geriatric care for quality of life."

Dr. Solo bowed his head. "I see now, why you wanted me to know. It's what Patcher would've wanted. You've honored him by telling me this. I can't promise anything," he warned, even as his mind searched frantically for some kind of solution, some kind of way to--if not actually make it right, at least make it known, make sure Patcher and all the clones in the trial, not to mention Commander Rex, Sticks, and all the other clones who'd had their lives cut short in quieter fashion, died for something. "But there might be...people I could tell. People who might at least look into it themselves, might listen if I tell them to look at it from another angle, and maybe they could at least get the word out there so people can know, and remember. I don't know who would actually do what. I don't have any real involvement in any of those things, either the secular ones, or...you know." 

Zarander nodded--he understood by that Ben meant the Jedi Order. Ben Solo would never lead the Jedi in his father's footsteps, though he might teach his Force-healing arts to others when the time was right. Those other roles would fall to Rey Skywalker, Keric Alsovar...others like them, to whom they came more naturally. And for that, Ben was thankful that even though the understanding had come hard, Uncle Luke had accepted this.

To Ben's suggestion, Dr. Zarander replied, "I guess it's worth a try. Whatever happens, at least a few more people will know."

"I will never forget. I promise." And that, Ben felt to the core of his soul, was a promise that would not be hard to keep, not at all. "You've honored me by bringing me here and telling me about your experiences. And please let me know," he added, "if there's anything I can ever do for you. I know I'm just a resident, but I can still try to knock some heads together if I need to. Figuratively, of course."

That brought the first shadow of a smile to Zarander's face, that Ben had seen in a while. "Be careful," he warned, though the corners of his lips curled up just a bit further as he spoke. "I just might take you up on that someday."

"Good." Dr. Solo couldn't help himself. There was one more question he had to ask. "Does that mean you're considering staying here, on Coruscant?"

"Look, I won't lie. Sometimes it can get rough here. You might have a little appreciation for that now." Ben nodded. "But things have been getting just a little better of late."

At that, Ben let himself begin to feel the first hint of relief.

Maybe there was some real hope that having at least one person on the 'outside'--however strange that person might be, Dr. Solo thought with an unseen, lopsided quirk of the lips--who was willing to open his mind to the idea that he was truly a man rather than a monster, might actually prove to be the right medicine...or at least the first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack: ("Land of Confusion" cover by Hidden Citizens, "Fear Is Not My Guide" by Demon Hunter)
> 
> CANON NOTES: Though this takes place in the AU of A Healing Force, the stories Dr. Zarander tells about his past in the Empire are also canon to Another Set of Eyes. Also, please note that Imperial Star Destroyers were about half the size of the First Order's Finalizer, so the difference in populations aboard these ships isn't a typo in either story. I carried over the structure I created for the Imperial Navy's Medical Corps over to the First Order, as well. While the existence of two distinct departments (Flight Medicine and Experimental Medicine) is not official Lucasfilm canon, I felt it makes sense as canon for my universes.
> 
> MEDICAL NOTES: Obviously I went out on a sci-fi limb when it came to describing the horrific thing the Kaminoans programmed, in my universes, into the Clone Troopers to shut down attempts to give them a normal lifespan. Gene therapy is still in its infancy IRL, and I would honestly like to hope creating that kind of anti-tamper genetic booby trap will turn out to be an impossible conjecture on my part. Even so I still tried to put in at least a few bits that might resemble known biomedical science. Cortisol truly is the body's major stress hormone. And what I referred to as "barbituric derivates" are a real drug class, IRL referred to as barbiturates, which are all derived from barbituric acid, and are among the drugs that can be used for a medically-induced coma. In current medical practice, a coma may be induced to reduce brain swelling and neurological damage when other, less dangerous treatments have failed or are not feasible. There is some concern IRL that if the patient is fighting an infectious disease, that barbiturates might weaken the immune response against the infectious agent...which is where I got the idea of trying to use that particular side effect to weaken an unwanted, out-of-control immune response. On top of that, I would also guess other immunosuppressant drugs that might have been given to Patcher...and in fact it was only as I went to hit submit that I realized (in addition to the fact that it's a hormone that can change its levels quickly) that Zarander could be implicating cortisol because administration of corticosteroids (prednisone, prednisolone, etc.) to try and stop the immune response instead made the problem worse and hastened Patcher's death. O_O
> 
> Again, I really went out on a sci-fi limb with this one and I'll have to ask my more medically knowledgeable watchers like ijudgelove to forgive me for taking liberties. Especially since I really hope they ARE just big liberties rather than actually feasible science. ::shudder::


End file.
